1. Technical Field
This application generally relates to the field of user account information and, in particular, to detection and repair of broken single sign-on integration with third-party services over a computer network.
2. Background Information
A software application that requires a person to log in to an account usually uses a username/password combination as the authentication mechanism. Therefore, people who have accounts for several different applications must remember several passwords. To make this task easier, people use a single sign-on (SSO) service. The SSO service stores a user's credentials (e.g., username and password) for one or more SSO-integrated applications and automatically signs in the user to the corresponding third-party service user accounts using the relevant credentials.
The SSO service stores information regarding each SSO-integrated application, which enables the service to properly integrate with each application's sign-on process. (The information about an SSO-integrated application that allows the SSO service to automate application sign-on—such as form field implementations, locations of the sign-in screens, or the like—is hereinafter referred to as an “SSO integration.”) If an application changes (e.g., its form fields, or the URL for its sign-on screen), then the SSO service might no longer properly integrate with that application's sign-on process, resulting in a broken SSO integration.